


A One Man War Against Starfleet?

by Cerridwen



Category: Star Trek Into Darkness - Fandom, Star Trek: Alternate Original Series (Movies)
Genre: Attack on the Daystrom Conference, Gen, Khan's motivations, Star Trek Meta, Star trek Kelvin timeline - Freeform, bombing of the Kelvin Archive
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-08-18
Updated: 2017-08-18
Packaged: 2018-12-16 18:50:44
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 734
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11834868
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Cerridwen/pseuds/Cerridwen
Summary: In Star Trek into Darkness Admiral Marcus declares that “John Harrison has just declared a one man war against Starfleet.” But did he? Let's take a closer look.





	A One Man War Against Starfleet?

 

“John Harrison has just declared a one man war against Starfleet.”

Yeah right!

Okay, let’s look at the facts here. We know that Khan is capable of coordinating multiple strikes simultaneously at different targets due to his conquering and taking over a quarter of the Earth during the Eugenics Wars. We know that Khan is capable of making bombs that are powerful enough to take out an entire downtown city block (including all the additional area occupied by the Section 31 base underneath the Kelvin archive) and we know that he can make them small and undetectable to 23rd century scanning devices as evidenced by Thomas Harewood walking into the weapons base wearing that bomb on his finger. Now the security around the Daystrom building was much lighter then that around the base under the archive (to put it extremely politely) and certainly the public areas of Starfleet Headquarters and Academy don’t require full retinal and body scans to enter them. As “Commander John Harrison” Khan would have had full access to either site making the planting of time-delayed bombs a simple matter. In addition it probably wouldn’t take Khan very long to assemble such devices given the right materials. As we saw Khan had the capacity to set up a safe house in London without Marcus ever being aware of it and was able to stock that safe house with the scientific and medical equipment needed to make Harewood’s ring and synthesis the serum for Lucy Harewood. So he certainly had the equipment and materials at hand.

 

Since the bombing of the archive happened one hour before the meeting at the Daystrom Conference that left Khan plenty of time to plant bombs at both sites by using the transwarp beaming device. In one strike he could have eliminated not only all of Starfleet’s high command based on Earth including his enemy Admiral Marcus but also all of the instructors and all four years of Starfleet’s cadets at the Academy thus delivering a crippling blow to Starfleet, possibly even destroying it due to the damage wrecked upon the fleet by Nero just one year previously.

More over Khan could have planned to do so right from the start, since (in my opinion) Khan planned the bombing of the archive to cover up his attempt to smuggle out his crew.  We saw Khan’s torpedoes in the background behind Harewood as he was walking to his station. What else would have drawn Khan’s attention to that particular Section 31 base? It certainly wasn’t randomly chosen. Harewood was too carefully selected for it to be that. Since Khan lived and died for his crew, rescuing them is the only option left.

Khan could have planted bombs at the Conference building and Starfleet Headquarters before the day of the attack on the archive, timed to go off simultaneously once the commanding officers had gathered. Then he could have escaped with his crew while ensuring that Starfleet would be unable to pursue them.

But he didn’t. Instead he took a small, armed jumpship and launched a highly specific attack against the man he believed to have killed his family and committed the genocide of the last of his race. If Khan had been strafing blindly into that room he would have killed everyone in minutes. Yet while there are indeed wounded the only confirmed causalities we see are Admirals. Khan doesn’t even return fire against the defense team that Pike called or at Kirk both of whom were shooting at him.

Far from being the “homicidal maniac” or “bloodthirsty monster” that others have called him, Khan showed a highly compassionate regard for the lives of the innocent and as much mercy towards his enemies as the circumstances and his sense of justice and honour would allow. The only time he didn’t do this throughout the entire movie was at the end when, having believed that he had just witnessed once again the murder of not only his entire family but also his race at the hands of Spock (whose life he had saved on Qo'nos) he targeted an already crashing Vengeance at Starfleet headquarters in a fit of madness. While I don’t discount or discredit the thousands of innocent lives that must have been lost when the Vengeance missed its target, still I have to ask …

How many times can you shatter a man’s heart before he finally breaks?

**Author's Note:**

> follow me at http://khantoelessar.tumblr.com/


End file.
